9.06.2011

Theme: Pigtails — The first word of each theme answer can follow the word "pig" in a familiar phrase.

Theme answers:

18A: *Typical Valentino roles (LATIN LOVERS).

59A: *Cold War symbol (IRON CURTAIN).

3D: *Quaint means of communication? (PEN AND PAPER).

5D: *Was in charge of (HEADED UP).

26D: *To whom "Howdy, stranger" is often said (OUT-OF-TOWNER).

40D: Girlish hairstyle (and what the starts of the answers to starred clues are?) (PIGTAILS).

Another smooth offering today. We seem to be on a roll this week. Cute theme! The "word-before/word-after" themes are hard for me to see while solving because I just don't take the time, but it's fun to look at them afterwards. It's a bonus when all the theme answers are fun/colorful/interesting phrases. Unfortunately, today's theme answers don't really qualify, except for LATIN LOVERS which is awesome. But the fill was "like butta" — no write-overs! — so no complaints from me today. In fact, the only two entries that made me think at all were SOLEMN (4D: Like vows), where I had SACRED in my head and couldn't get rid of it, and TUTTE (37A: Mozart's "Così fan __"), which I always think might be spelled TUTTI, so I have to check the crosses.

Oh wait, I also paused at [39A: Cheesecake on a wall]. My mind went completely blank on this one. "Why the hell would anyone have cheesecake on a wall? Is it a painting of cheesecake? Was somebody angry?" No, cheesecake in this case refers to, well … I'm not sure exactly what it refers to, but it has to do with a picture of a sexy person pinned up on your wall, also known as a PIN-UP.

Several cute "?" clues today. My favorites:

63A: Org. for piece lovers? (NRA).

28D: What keeps bloomers up? (STEMS).

60D: Microsturgeons? (ROE).

The clue for BBC (51A: English channel, briefly) might also have taken a question mark. I'm sure there's a distinction there that I'm missing, but whatever. It's still a clever clue.

Fairly smooth solve today. Only hiccup was putting SUNTEA before ICETEA. Cute theme -- didn't see it until getting to 40D. Too bad they couldn't work in "inkwell", but I guess you can't have everything.

The French callit "La Manche" (it would kill them to call it "La Canal Anglaises", let's face it) because they think it looks like a sleeve (manche=sleeve). Their capitalization of "Manche" leads you to understand they're not trying to tunnel under part of your shirt :)

@Gene - I remember. The Vargas/Varga girls were drawings. Betty Grable was a real actress famous for her legs. The Peruvian, Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chavez, used his wife as a model, and others continued the drawings after his death.